Doves' Eyes
by Lady Nailo
Summary: A mysterious woman surprises Kurt Wagner in prayer, but gets far more than she bargained for. Oh, and Pyro sings Hall and Oates.


**Disclaimer**: _X-Men_ and all related characters belong to Marvel Comics and their respective creators. I'm making no profits, just having fun with the characters. Anyone who wants Magdalena can have her. Anything else that I've borrowed is cited at the end. 

**A/N**: This one takes place after _X2_. There's some parody in here, so watch for it, and I tried not to make things too dramatic or angsty. Kurt just sort of ran with my initial idea and wouldn't come back. *sigh*. Enjoy!   
  


**Doves' Eyes**   
  


The chapel was quiet and cool; this late at night no parishioners knelt in the pews and gazed at the crucifix hanging before them in silent prayer. The small vigil candles shone red through their tinted holders, shedding only fitful light on the altar. The priest sat by his single lamp in the rectory next door, dozing over his well-worn Bible with a slight smile on his similarly worn face. Even now, the building slept, its duties fulfilled for another deepening night. 

A slight rush of air and the faint smell of brimstone accompanied the sudden appearance of a dark-robed man just outside the threshold, a hood hiding his face. He glanced around almost fearfully, and waited a long moment for the pink-tinged smoke gathered around him to waft away in the slight breeze before pushing open the great double doors with one thick, three-fingered hand. 

Once inside, he removed his hood and glanced around with shining yellow eyes that picked out the empty pews as well as if the sun shone through the elaborate stained glass windows lining the walls. He was surprisingly quiet as he walked down the center aisle, one hand trailing across the pews' tops, the other reaching into his cloak to retrieve the ivory-white rosary he kept secreted next to his heart. At the end of the aisle sat the altar, dark and smelling faintly of wax and frankincense from the daily services. The man inhaled deeply; it was one of his favorite smells, and he regretted not being able to be there when it was new. 

Back in Germany there were only a few priests who would open the chapels for him after dark and offer him the Holy Communion as he knelt, still reeking of grease paint and sweat from the night's performance, his rosary clutched in his thick, misshapen fingers and his mouth moving in silent prayer. These priests were unafraid of his strange fur that blended with the darkness, or his wide, yellow eyes that glowed ever so faintly; they would place their hands on his head and bless him in the name of his Lord and Savior. Some had seen the horrors of the last Great War; some had only read about them. But all knew, undeniably, that to judge a man by the color or shape of his body was one of the greatest sins of all. 

Now, the man walked alone down the quiet chapel's center aisle, taking in the sights and smells of his childhood. He mused, as he genuflected at the foremost pew, that no matter where he went, he always felt the same sort of calm and peace when he walked over the threshold of the Lord's House. It was welcoming, inviting, loving; he felt he was home, at last. It was a place he could belong. 

A large wooden crucifix hung over the altar, the torn and bloody shepherd looking blindly down at his flock of one murmuring quiet prayers in the darkness. "…dein Reich komme, dein Wille geschehe wie im Himmel, so auf der Erde…" The melodic words flowed smoothly, easily; he had been saying them for as long as he could remember. He smiled, slightly; he was a creature of habit, and a missed prayer would be cause for another scar to be traced along his skin. The ones he had were testament to the time he spent locked in a dank, dark cell in the Alkali Lake dam complex; then, his soul had ached for the calming prayer that he would be beaten for. He had used bits of metal, cast off syringes, and even his own nails to scratch the symbols up and down his arms, across his face, and onto his chest, not caring about the pain. There were prayers, of some sort, and they made him feel better for the time being. Perhaps they still did. 

Now, though, he had what he wanted most: silence, solitude, and what forgiveness the Lord would give unto him. He bowed his head, and began his prayer anew.   
  


Unknown to him, a pair of eyes watched the faithful man kneel and pray from the rafters high above the chapel's floor. They were blue eyes, shimmering and beautiful to look at, and they followed the man's every actions with quick, calculating movements. His words, "in Versuchung, sondern rette uns vor dem Bösen…" floated up, and a pearly smile became visible as the figure in the rafters grinned. In a deft, graceful motion the figure leapt from the rafters, causing a small flurry of dust to fall to the floor, and brilliant white wings unfurled and spread through the air, catching the light from the vigil candles that turned the pure white a dull magenta. The winged figure hovered before the crucifix, and the praying man, startled, stared with wide, yellow eyes at this new, unexpected, parishioner. 

He could see it was a woman, dressed in a long white shift that fitted her figure snugly, revealing far too much to be decent. Her long, honey-blonde hair flowed down her back and past her knees, wafting slightly in the breeze her flapping wings caused. Sparkling blue eyes gazed serenely down on him, and her face almost shone with beauty. He was speechless, but only for a moment. 

"You are…" he began, rising from the pew and clutching his rosary tightly in his left hand, "you are an…" 

"An angel," the woman spoke, her voice smooth and melodic in the way the man expected it to be. She smiled benevolently down upon him, and let her bare feet touch the floor beside the altar before continuing. "You, Kurt Wagner, may call me Magdalena. I've come to ease your suffering." She continued smiling and took a step toward him, her arms outstretched in the universal gesture of welcoming. 

The man, Kurt, took a step back, his high ankles bumping into the pew's seat painfully. He hid his grimace of pain, and watched the angel-woman with a skeptic's eyes, taking in her graceful movements and the utter perfection of her body. Magdalena took another step toward him. 

"Come with me, Kurt," she whispered, her hair flowing like a veil behind her. "I will bring you to a place beyond everything you can imagine; a place where you will be accepted, not scorned for your countenance." She reached out to him; Kurt pulled back even more, climbing over the pew almost absently to put distance between him and the woman whom he was more and more wary of. Her blue eyes glimmered with hidden intelligence - he didn't trust her. She was no angel. 

Kurt cleared his throat, affecting a wavering tone of deference, and bowed his head. "Siehe, meine Freundin, du bist schön; schön bist du, deine Augen sind wie Taubenaugen," he said in a soft voice, keeping his eyes on the pew top in front of him. The fine brown varnish was beginning to crack in age, revealing a thin sliver of an ugly off-white color. He waited a moment in silence, and then looked up, feigning surprise at the confused and startled look the winged woman gave him. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" he tried again, and felt almost satisfied when she looked at him blankly, tilting her head to the side and looking like a large, anthropomorphic sparrow. He stifled a laugh. 

So, his 'angel' couldn't speak German, could she? Kurt knew from long hours of study and discussion that angels were not bound by human language; they could communicate with any living thing and understand whatever they replied, regardless of language. That alone was proof enough that this angel was an imposter, though he was unsure of who she could be working for. To discover that would require cunning and intelligence, both of which he had in abundance (or so he liked to think). Kurt smiled brightly and bound over the pews to kneel before the phony angel, noticing with hidden glee that she was beginning to crack as badly as the varnish. 

"Oh, beautiful Engel," he cried, attempting to work the feeling of rapture into his voice. The woman, who had been frowning in a rather undignified way a moment before, suddenly broke into a wide, almost blinding grin and motioned for him to continue. Kurt racked his brain for pleasing things to say. "Tell me of this place that you will take me to, where men will not laugh at my features and women will not shy away in terror!" 

A momentary sadness worked its way into Kurt's voice; these things were true, despite the enthusiasm he falsely wove around them. It had been a long time since he had gone outside the circus and into 'society,' as his dear foster mother called it. _Society today isn't ready for you_, she would say, holding him close to her and stroking his deep indigo hair, just a few shades darker from the fine fur that covered the rest of his body. _Just a short time longer, and they'll understand, you'll see_. 

He bit the inside of his lip, an old habit he developed when Margali had scolded him for the scars his fangs left on his bottom lip. _Margali… Do you see where that sentiment has gotten me now? Hidden from view in an old church, waiting for the world to come around. What if they never do?_ He tried to keep any bitterness out of his words, but they worked themselves in somehow. "I would do anything to go there." 

The woman smiled and inclined her chin in a failing attempt to look regal; from Kurt's position, it made her look giraffe-like. He smiled, and waited for her to speak. 

"I come from a place full of men and women like you." She spoke in an airy, light voice, projecting so her words filled the whole church and the vibrating echoes rattled the candles in their holders. "It is a beautiful place, where we can be free to be ourselves, and hide from the ridicule that so often scorns us in this cruel world." She looked down at him, and he attempted a passable cower at her sapphire-like gaze. Yet, even as he looked away in pretend terror, something in her words struck him. 

_Scorn? **Ridicule?**_

He looked up and met her eyes, and she stepped back in surprise at the sudden change in them. What was once deference and fear was now authority and courage, and Kurt rose to his feet to stand a full four inches above her. The woman stepped back again, looking suddenly small. 

"What do you know of scorn?" Kurt began, not breaking his stare as he stepped forward. The woman took a third step back and stopped, her wings grazing the edge of the altar. She was stuck; Kurt advanced again. 

"What do you know of ridicule, Engel?" he questioned again. The woman looked around frantically, searching for an escape route, but it was in vain; Kurt pinned her to the white-draped altar with two well-muscled arms, his spaded tail waving menacingly above his head. It cracked like a whip, making the woman squeal in surprise and possibly terror. "Look at me." 

She refused, and Kurt's resounding shout echoed around the church like a maelstrom. 

"**Look at me!**" 

Terrified blue eyes met fierce yellow ones and didn't not look away. Kurt leaned in close, until his aquiline German nose was centimeters away from her petite, pointed one, and spoke in a soft, quite dangerous voice. 

"Have you ever been forced to hide among dung-heaps from ignorant men and women who would hurt you because of the way you look?" The woman shook her head quickly; Kurt continued. "Have you ever looked into the faces of innocent children and smiled, only to be faced with screams and tears as they run for their mothers?" Again, the woman motioned negatively, and again Kurt went on. "Have you ever overheard men, speaking around a campfire where they think no one can hear, say that you are the spawn of the Devil himself, and that your own mother must have thought you hideously malformed, for she tossed you into a river the hour you were born?" At this, tears broke free of the woman's eyes, which could have been beautiful if they had not reminded him of all the other pitying gazes he had known. Kurt released her and turned away, his hands clutched in fists at his sides. "Then, lovely one, you know nothing." 

His tail quivered and lashed in anger, hitting the carpeted dais with resounding 'thunks.' Behind him, he could hear the woman's wings scraping along the carpet and her muffled gasps as she tried to quell her fear. _I shouldn't have frightened her so_, he thought for a moment, feeling pangs of guilt and regret. _Am I truly as bad as they always say I am? Am I that much of a monster that I would frighten a girl half to death?_

Something sharp was biting into the smooth skin of his right palm; it stung like an insect bite. He looked down and opened his hand. 

It was his well-worn rosary, the tiny crucifix on the end stained crimson with drops of his own blood that leaked from a small cut on his hand. He winced as he lifted the rosary away and held it up to the candlelight; one of the cross's sharp ends must have dug into the skin, causing the cut, and now the Christ glimmered wetly, blood red in the flickering light of the prayer candles. He raised his gaze to the larger crucifix hanging above the altar. 

"Here is a man," he began, in a low voice that soon rose in volume, "a man who was ridiculed and scorned. Here is a man who was beaten and crowned with thorns, who watched a criminal go free while he was sent to die, and whose own friends and followers denied him thrice. Here," and he pointed with his bloodied hand to the cross and the still figure of the Christ hanging in perpetual agony, "is a man who, when dying in agony on crossed wooden beams, for all to see, forgave those who tormented and killed him with his last mortal breaths. And, for all this bloodshed, for all this pain, what was his only crime?" He looked with opened, sorrowful eyes at the cowering angel-woman, Magdalena, as she had named herself. She was frightened. "Being different. That was all." 

"My sins are numerous, enough to cover my whole body." An absent finger traced the whorls carved into his cheeks, remembering each cut like it was fresh and bleeding. "Yet, when I am here, I know, wholeheartedly, that I am with a man who has suffered more than I, simply for being different, and perhaps frightening to those who remained ignorant. But he never turned away. He was never satisfied with waiting for the world to be ready. If he had…" Kurt's voice trailed off as he looked down at the rosary resting in his hand. His thick, furred fingers curled around it tightly, and held it to his chest. "…The world would never be ready." 

He glanced toward the girl, who was now standing several feet away from him, her face tearstained and her thin dress wrinkled from the way her hands wringed it nervously. He smiled, but she only shied away. "I won't go with you, now or ever. I don't need a place where I can be myself, as you say; that would only be a temporary solution, and a cowardly one, at that." He bowed his head, and looked toward the double doors at the end of the church's middle aisle. "No. I will wait here, perhaps in the shadows, and help those who need it, regardless of what they say or do to me. I will stay where I am needed, and will not fear or run from anyone. Isn't that true courage, and true faith, as well?" 

It took him several strides to reach the door, and he pushed them open, breathing deeply of the cool night air. Stars winked above him, and he smiled. But, before he took his leave, he turned back to look at the small, dimmed figure of the winged girl. "And, for the record," he said, grinning this time, "Your eyes are nothing like a dove's. A pig's, maybe, or a rat's, but nothing like a dove's." And then, in a flash of smoke and a puff of brimstone, he disappeared, leaving only a faint haze of smoke where he had stood. The doors closed silently, and all was left in darkness. 

Back near the altar, the woman Magdalena stared down at her shaking hands and sighed as they slowly ceased their trembling. What had ever made her think that man was cute? One little phrase, and he had gone completely off his rocker and practically killed her! Which reminded her… Magdalena looked away toward a shadowed corner of the church, where a small flame appeared and disappeared in quick succession, accompanied by a faint clicking sound. "Pyro," she whined, trying to smooth out her wrinkled dress, "why didn't you help me?" 

"Stop your whining." The darkness pulled back as the small flame grew and illuminated the figure of a tall, rather handsome young man, whose eyes glimmered slightly in the darkness. "It's unattractive." The fire circled his head like a halo, though he looked anything but angelic. 

"Nothing about _me_ is unattractive." Magdalena grimaced and shivered at the thought, tossing her hair gracefully behind her shoulder. The young man smiled in a distinctly oily way. 

"Little Boy Blue certainly seemed to think so," he said, coming closer. The flame circling his head congealed into a flaming ball, which he tossed idly from hand to hand. It crackled ominously, and Magdalena twitched her wings away from him, wrinkling her nose. 

"He obviously didn't appreciate my many charms." The haughty inclination of her head made Pyro's eyes narrow in annoyance. "It wasn't anything _I_ did. It was all _him_." 

"All _him_, huh?" Pyro's face lit up, partially from the wide grin now plastered across his features, and partially from the glowing ball of flame, now grown to twice its original size. "Well, regardless of that fact, you know what happens when you fail, don't you?" 

Magdalena rolled her eyes in a bored way and held out her left hand, palm down. "Go on, hit me with a ruler or whatever." She sighed, examining the nails on her right hand absently as she spoke. "Mags must have gotten his punishments from Sunday school or something." Completely engrossed in her nails, she did not see what Pyro did next. She should have known not to let a pyromaniac out of her sight, especially after said pyromaniac had previously inquired as to both the rayon content of her dress, and the possible flammability of her large, feathered wings. 

Though, on her part, she never really knew what was coming. A fireball the size of her head thrown point blank at her chest was, perhaps, the last thing she expected. But, then again, belonging to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and surrounding herself with cutthroats, backstabbers, and mental cases should have taught her to expect the unexpected. But Magdalena had never been one to rely on common sense. That was what people who didn't have her natural charm and beauty were forced to do. Not her. Thinking that, in the last few seconds of her life, when she could have escaped certain death with a quick and possibly painless dodge to the left, was her last mistake.   
  


Pyro learned two things that day. First, the combination of a 75% rayon/25% polyester white princess-cut dress and a large pair of white feathered wings makes a rather spectacular flash fire, though the resulting bonfire is somewhat disappointing unless you add some of the sacramental wine for fuel; and second, for future reference, it's best to lob another fireball at the victim's head, melting her vocal cords, because screaming is something best left to a torture chamber and not the altar of Westchester County's largest Catholic church, and anyway, the resulting fire and police sirens give him headaches. 

He slipped out the back entrance, melting into the shadows of the darkened alley like one born there. Several hundred yards away, he paused to glance back at his handiwork. Flames leapt high in the night sky, illuminating everything around them for hundreds of feet and making a spectacular and quite beautiful picture. People were gathering now, most in nightshirts and slippers, and he blended effortlessly into the crowd, listening to their speculations and wonderings as to the cause of the seemingly random fire. He wished he had a camera, so he could capture the moment forever, and possibly frame it and hang it above his headboard back at the Brotherhood Lair-O'-The-Week. 

No one in the crowd noticed the nonchalant young man in a tan leather jacket stroll away from the scene of the biggest fire in the city that year. No one saw the satisfied look on his face as he flicked his lighter open and closed, watching the tiny flame with a connoisseur's eye. And, of course, no one heard him whisper in a sing-song voice, "Oh, oh, here he comes…watch out girl, he'll burn you up…Oh, oh, here he comes…He's the burninator…" as he turned a corner and disappeared.   


* * *

  


**Mini Bibliography**:   
-- The first few bits of German Kurt spoke were the Lord's Prayer in German. I have the website I got it from, but ff.net is suddenly afraid of urls. Grr.   
-- The first inquiry to Magdalena was the Song of Solomon (1:15) from the Luther translation of the Bible, also from a website that I can't cite here. Grr once again.   
The English translation: _Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes_   
-- Pyro's little song at the end is of my own making (horrible as it is). The tune is Hall & Oates' _Maneater_. Why? Because he's crazy, that's why.   
-- "Burninate" is homage to Trogdoor (hope I spelled that right).   
-- If anyone is interested in the sites where I got this from, leave a review or email me. 

**Extraneous Notes**:   
-- The Song of Solomon is one of the Bible's most beautiful pieces (in my humble opinion, of course). When I stumbled across it, I knew I had to use it for Kurt somehow.   
-- I didn't mean for it to get so preachy in the end, but it was a comparison that I knew Kurt would make. Regardless of my own personal beliefs, the man Christians choose to worship as the Christ was a remarkable man, if only for his deeds as a human being. And this is coming from someone who isn't even Catholic any longer. Funny :)   
-- Yes, I know Magneto is Jewish. Magdalena is just that stupid that she didn't realize the Hebrews don't have nuns or Sunday school (that I know of. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.)   
-- Kurt's second inquiry is "Do you speak German?" for those who are curious.   
-- And let it be said that the title gave me the most trouble at all. I was toying with calling it "Deliver Me," but finally settled on "Doves' Eyes." It still sounds like a Prince song, though... 

Special thanks goes out to all those who reviewed "Fanning the Flames," which you could say is the precursor to this one. You guys know who you are (all seven of you), and I couldn't thank you enough. You're what made me want to write this one :) 

I'm thinking of writing another one along this vein...any suggestions as to which character? 

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Leave a review or email me :) 


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